


When Mercy is Impossible

by Uniasus



Series: Mercy [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Arthur-centric, Burning, Destiny, Gen, It's a bit graphic, Season/Series 03, just one scene though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:24:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7195418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uniasus/pseuds/Uniasus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's too sudden. From conviction to lighting the pyre barely two hours past and Arthur only hears of it as the torch falls.  And then, impossibly, Merlin survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Mercy is Impossible

**Author's Note:**

> Another offspring of all the h/c fics I've been reading. I *am* working on Veritas, I promise. Some of you might have seen my tumblr posts about it a few nights ago - it's going completely not in the way I expected. But it's coming.
> 
> Heads up - I snuck Aithusa in here and then realized this is set in S03 and she's hatched in S04. So just pretend she came about a year before. Also, while the torture is off screen, there's a few paragraph of the vivid aftermath. You're warned.

* * *

Arthur didn’t know who made the accusation, or if there was even proof, but he supposed it was someone with a lot of power.

Merlin didn’t get the typical night in the dungeon. He got two hours, if that, between getting manhandled by the guards and being tied to the pyre. Arthur hadn’t even known it had happened until Gwen interrupted training, and by that time Merlin was already being led to his death.

He watched in horror as Merlin burned. Watched it all, until the fire burned out.

Arthur didn’t know what he felt when amongst the ashes there’s wasn’t a charred body. There was a badly burned, barely breathing one.

Merlin had, impossibly, survived.

* * *

Arthur hadn’t been the only one to notice. He might have spent the entire time on the balcony, Gwen joining him once Uther had left, but the guardsmen and the undertaker had watched too from just beyond the pyre.

They gotten to Merlin first. Arthur ordered them off. Someone ran to tell the king.

Arthur only managed to get Merlin to Gaius, gotten him there quick enough for the physician to wash the burns, before Merlin was tossed into the dungeon again.

Except he wasn’t in the dungeon. Arthur had checked. Leon had checked.

Merlin was missing.

Merlin was alive.

Both thoughts squeezed his heart painfully.

* * *

That’s what kept him going, some days. That if Merlin could survive two hours of flames, he could certainly live through whatever was happening now.

He held tight to that thought.

He didn’t want it to not be true.

* * *

Arthur had, for reasons he wasn’t sure he could name, taken to having supper with Gwen and Gaius in the physician's quarters.

Gaius always seemed worried for Merlin, but never grieved. He never outright said it, but Gaius didn’t believe Merlin to be dead.

It was a sad thought for them all.

Who wouldn’t feel the burn of flames and want to die?

Who would want to _live_ through that and the pain that continued afterwards?

Arthur knew mercy killings.

Maybe he should have delivered one.

But he had desperately wanted Merlin to live.

* * *

A Witchfinder arrived.

Arthur didn’t know why. Merlin had already been convicted of sorcery. There had been no additional strange tales. And after what happened last time, neither Arthur or Uther trusted the profession.

But Witchfinders knew magic.

Uther wanted answers for something.

Arthur thought it had to do with why Merlin survived the fire. And if he wanted answers now, three weeks later, the likelihood that Merlin had survived his wounds was high.

* * *

Gaius spilled a secret that night.

Merlin was - _was, not had -_ magic.

Merlin was immortal.

Nothing Uther did, nothing the new Witchfinder would do, would change that.

Having first hand experience, Gaius knew what a Witchfinder could do. Knew what Uther could do.

Arthur dreamt that night of the horrors, the pain Merlin had gone through, was going through, and would go through thanks to Uther. Merlin cried, pleaded, begged for it to stop. For death.

But it never came. It never would.

Gaius couldn’t be right, it was just a dream.

But how else had Merlin survived the pyre?

* * *

Morgana smirked while she strutted through the halls. Arthur noticed, but pushed it out of his mind every time.

She was planning something. She always was. Most likely a new way to humiliate Arthur. Or something to cheer him up. She cared, after all.

Arthur cared about other things at the moment. Merlin was at the top of the list, but below that were two things he believed related to the first.

One. Small, isolated reports that together spoke of a dragon in the area.

Two. Patrols coming across an increasing amount of evidence of Druids in the Darkling Woods surrounding the citadel.

How they were related, Arthur didn’t know. He also didn’t care.

He was too focused on trying to free Merlin.

* * *

The answer came from a Druid leader and the clan cat.

Although, the cat was not a cat. It was a white dragon. A baby dragon, who acted like a cat.

Arthur didn’t want to know where it came from.

What mattered was that the dragon, for some reason, was connected to Merlin.

The dragons, for this one was too small to have been causing the destruction the reports described so there had to be two, and the Druids were aware of Merlin’s pain.

Gaius had said some of the Druids could speak mind to mind. Merlin apparently was in so much pain, he had broadcasted his plea for help to half the kingdom.

The Druids and dragons answered it immediately.

For Merlin was magic, immortal, and _prophesied._ He was the magic saviour.

Arthur ignored the part that said Merlin, Emrys, was supposed to do all that with Arthur.

Merlin had never said anything. Not that Arthur blamed him.

And right now Arthur didn’t care about any of that. He simply wanted Merlin free.

* * *

The dragons had the best, most painful, connection.

It meant the small one could follow Merlin's thoughts better than the Druids. So Arthur, Iseldir, the dragon, Gaius, and a stubborn Gwen walked through the castle at night.

The dragon did not lead them to the dungeons. Not did she lead them, as Gaius had suspected, to the old dragon cave. Instead, they entered a tunnel Arthur had thought his father sealed.

The entrance to Sigan’s tomb.

Uther had widened the path, brought down furniture and a small portable stove for warmth. He had brought a desk, now covered with note filled pages. There were items from the torture chamber scattered around.

Gwen picked up a paper, only to drop it in shock.

Gaius picked it up.

Apparently, knowing he couldn’t die, Merlin had become an experiment for the Witchfinder. How poisons affected the body. The relative pain tolerance of certain acts. How a heart looked as it beat.

Vivisections.

Many.

Because Merlin healed.

To some extent.

As one note read, Merlin could only regenerate what was attached to his body. Cut off a finger and burn it, and it was gone. Cut it off and line it back up hours after you flayed it, and the finger would reattach and heal only to leave a small scar.

It made Arthur sick.

It made Gwen even sicker.

She couldn't, couldn't, see Merlin. She wouldn't be able to stand the sight.

She left, Gaius at her elbow.

Gaius had to prepare for a long, frantic night of care now that he had some idea of what condition Merlin was in.

In the commotion of their leaving, the dragon disappeared.

Arthur panicked. There was no other way to find Merlin and Arthur desperately wanted to find him.

Iseldir raised a hand for silence. A sound, a croon and wail wrapped up together, sounded from down the tunnel. Arthur rushed towards it.

* * *

The dragon was making the noise as she nudged and prodded at a form on a low table. Arthur knew it was Merlin. Who else could it be? Knowing though made him hesitate to step closer. The notes were bad. Merlin would be worse.

Iseldir didn’t care. He brushed past Arthur to lean over Merlin’s head. Called Merlin Emrys, tried to get a response, but there was none other than small noises of pain. The Druid settled to half lifting Merlin to try to force him to drink water laced with painkillers.

He struggled. Arthur hurried to help.

He pointedly didn’t look at Merlin’s legs. He’d seen enough while standing in the alcove’s entrance.

The finger experiment was obviously being done on larger body parts. Someone, the Witchfinder, Uther, had cut off Merlin’s left leg at the thigh, whittled down the flesh around the bone so the femur stuck out like the bone on a haunch of meat, and then lined up the bone ends. And yet there was no jagged edges from the saw, just holes in a ring around the bone exposed to the air while the muscle on either side of the gap sluggishly bled.

Merlin’s right thigh had be sliced down the top and then had the skin peeled back, just like removing an animal’s hide. Only Merlin’s skin was pinned to the wooden table and new skin had started to grow from the top and lower edges of the rectangular wound.

If Arthur had come across a man in such a condition anywhere else, he’d slit the injured’s throat to spare him more pain.

Except it wouldn’t work for Merlin. Death was a mercy he’d never experience.

Arthur asked Iseldir if Merlin was in pain, if he was screaming in the Druid’s head, but Iseldir said no despite the small whimpers Merlin made as Iseldir forced him to swallow the pain killers.

Merlin hadn’t sent out pleas for help in two days. He’d retreated too far into himself, trying to escape the pain in anyway he could. Removed himself from the world.

The white dragon, sitting half on Merlin’s chest and half on the bloody table, made a sound of agreement.

They couldn’t leave right away, not without risking Merlin’s left leg falling off held as it was by an increasingly less holey bone. While they waited for the limb to, impossible and horrifically, heal, Arthur cut off the skin flaps pinned to the table. With new skin growing to heal the wound on Merlin’s right leg, the peeled back flaps would just be extra skin dangling on either side of Merlin’s thigh.

Task done and hands bloody, Arthur had to step away from the table and out of the alcove to breathe. He couldn’t escape the smell of blood, the copper tang in the air, the image of Merlin lying there.

When the Witchfinder and a guard showed up ten minutes later, Arthur killed them. It was the first time he had wanted and happily killed a man.

* * *

Apparently they were taking too long, because the next person to enter the tunnel was another Druid. Gaius had expected them much sooner.

Merlin’s bone had healed completely, at least it looked like that to Arthur, but Iseldir was still reluctant to carry Merlin. With another Druid however to help carry a pallet, Merlin was carefully brought to Gaius’s chambers while Arthur ran interference.

Merlin didn’t stir the entire trip.

* * *

Merlin didn’t stir for two weeks.

He was physically healed and hidden in the old dragon’s cave with two dragons, and half a dozen Druids watching him, but he wouldn’t wake.

Arthur was slightly concerned, but knew that Merlin was alive and for now that was good enough.

Uther was looking for Merlin. He hadn’t said anything to Arthur, other than someone had killed the Witchfinder. Uther had let no one believe that Merlin was alive and so his sudden disappearance was hidden as well. There was no public search.

But the Druids had fled, once again pursued by Uther who believed they had played a role in Merlin’s escape. Arthur led the attacks, bringing his new servant with him.

A Druid servant, who would mentally warn the camp they were approaching.

Arthur couldn’t control his knights individually, but he did his best to get in the way of a few of them and didn’t draw his sword on a Druid.

Iseldir and Gaius had given him education on many things - magic and prophecy and him and Merlin. Even if he hadn’t had his mind opened to magic, Arthur would have still defied his father.

After what Uther did to Merlin -

There was no excuses for that. Magic or not.

If it had been Baynard that done it, Arthur would have declared war.

As it was his own father, Arthur discreetly disobeyed his Uther at every turn.

Morgana encouraged it. Said she also disliked Uther for what he had done to Merlin.

Strange how Gwen never told Morgana about the truth. That Merlin was alive and comatose and guarded more fiercely than the Holy Grail of legend.

* * *

When Arthur asked Gwen why she never told Morgana about Merlin, for certainly Merlin and Morgana were friends, he got an answer as shocking as Merlin’s immortality.

Morgana had magic.

Morgana had used it to harm Arthur in the past.

Morgana was in league with Morgause.

And no one had told him because they hadn’t thought he’d believe it.

He did now.

* * *

Arthur had a feeling it had been Morgana who turned Merlin in. She had done it not knowing about Merlin’s magic, Merlin’s importance to the world.

She had done it because Merlin was important to Arthur and Merlin had stopped her plans before.

Gaius, Gwen, and the Great Dragon all agreed.

* * *

As Uther calmed down, the task became to try to wake Merlin.

A month had past and still he slept beneath the Great Dragon’s wings.

He never stirred. Not at the many mental calls the dragons and Druids sent his way. Not at Gaius’s voice, or Hunith’s, or Gwen’s. Nor at Arthur’s.

A cave beneath Camelot was not the place for Merlin to rest. To find peace and leave the small bit of sanctuary he had made for himself. It was not safe.

But the Druids and Great Dragon agreed - destiny was destiny. It would happen. Arthur and Merlin, the Once and Future King and Emrys would bring about a new world.

Merlin would wake. He’d help found Albion. And the key to that was Arthur.

So Merlin had to be close to the Prince and Arthur visited every night. Sitting beside Merlin, maybe holding his hand, maybe moving his head to Arthur’s lap. He’d talk to the Dragon, or Iseldir, or Merlin. He’d talk about his day, learn about the Old Religion, or Merlin’s adventures second hand.

He’d sit there and listen to stories about Albion, to the hope that Emrys and the Once and Future King would bring. He took the expectations, the responsibility. Merlin had carried them for so long by himself, it was Arthur’s turn to do that.

Because Arthur dreamed and feared of the future beyond Albion.

Of when two hundred years later another man like Uther got a hold of Merlin and Arthur wouldn’t be there to help. Of five hundred years later when Merlin stood staring at ruins of Camelot, all traces of home gone. Of a thousand years later, two thousand, when Merlin would be alone always and forever because _he could not die._

What was worse? The physical pain of the Witchfinder or the emotional pain of watching all you love disappear?

It didn’t matter. Merlin would experience both.

For now though, Merlin slept. Away from pain, away from destiny, his face serene in a way Arthur had never seen before.

Allowing him to sleep, even if it was for forever, might be the only mercy anyone could offer him.

Arthur would try to meet destiny's demands on his own.


End file.
